Residents of Whitehall, Arkansas are literally drinking gold

RESIDENTS of a small town in the United States have struck gold in the most unlikely of places.

At least two residents of Whitehall, a town of 5000 people in Jefferson County, in the state of Arkansas have discovered gold flakes in their tap water.

And they’re not happy because it’s raising concerns of what else could be in the water if gold can find its way in.

Mark Brown’s wife Sharon was finishing up the dishes when she first saw the flakes.

“She had pulled the plug to let the water out and there were glistening, gleaming little flecks,’’ Mr Brown told NBC.

The couple were stunned by the small gold-coloured flakes that settled at the bottom of the sink and couldn’t believe it was actually gold.

“That couldn’t possibly be gold, huh? And I was sure it wasn’t.”

Gold flakes that the Brown family of Whitehall, Arkansas, found when they were doing the dishes.

The Browns are finding the flakes in their tap water and also the toilet tank. They ran multiple tests on the flakes and found one of the most precious metals on earth — gold — was coming out of the tap.

Mr Brown said: “Everything I tried to do to dispel this, I got nothing. And I can’t explain it either. It’s bizarre.”

Among the tests run on the gold flakes was a chemical test where a solution is used to dissolve any metal that isn’t pure gold.

The town gets its drinking water from two wells, both right in the middle of town.

Paul Harper lives next door to the Browns and is also seeing gold in his tap water. He deals in antiques and gold and is the one who conducted the chemical test. He said: “There was no dissolving at all of the gold.”

Harper ran the test again for us. There was no reaction on the flakes, but when the chemical hit gold-painted foil, it melted away.

Gold flakes in their water is not what the residents of Whitehall expected to see.

Harper and the Browns are concerned about what their findings mean for the town’s water supply and its filtration.

“If we’re seeing heavy metals that you can see with the naked eye,” said Brown, “what else might be in there?”

Jerry Ward, Whitehalls Public Works Director, insists there is nothing to indicate anything harmful in the water.

Gold is no stranger to Whitehall. In the early 1980s an open pit gold mine went into operation northeast of Whitehall.

But state water quality officials say there is no reason to suspect whatever the homeowners found in their water came from that mine.

An official with the State Department of Environmental Quality told NBC he suspected the flakes reported came from pipes or a pump, or some approved equipment tied to the Whitehall water supply.

More tests are being carried out on the samples collected from the Brown and Harper homes to try and determine exactly what is going on in the water pipes of Whitehall.